He unfolded the letter and read parts of it aloud to Yootha as they strolled along the heather. The paragraph which interested her most, ran as follows:
“... Stothert also told me Mrs. Macmahon had told him that Froissart, for some time before he took his life, had been threatened with exposure of his private life if he refused to continue to pay increasingly large sums of money to certain persons who were persecuting him....”
Yootha put her hand impulsively on her lover’s arm.
“Charlie!” she exclaimed, “that is exactly what Cora told me she thought might have been the reason of Lord Froissart’s suicide. She had heard rumors of his intimacy with some woman in Ireland, and that there was possibility of a big scandal, and she also told me Lord Froissart possessed such a sensitive nature that she could not imagine what would happen if the scandal ever came to a head. And now I have an idea. Don’t you think it possible Vera Froissart may have discovered her father’s secret, and that the shock of the discovery may have driven her, for very shame, to end her life?”
For some moments Preston did not answer. Then he said:
“My darling, I don’t think that. What I think far more likely is that Vera may intentionally have been enlightened concerning her father’s unfortunate infatuation for Mrs. Macmahon, and herself have been blackmailed by the very people who afterwards blackmailed her father, in which case the same scoundrels are indirectly responsible for the death of both father and daughter. More, I now suspect the person or persons who threatened Froissart and his daughter may be the people now threatening us if we refuse to intimidate Cora in the way they wish us to.”
Yootha stopped in her walk, staring speechless at her companion.
“Good heavens!” she exclaimed at last. “How can such wretches be allowed to live?”
Then her imagination began to work with extraordinary rapidity. She thought of Cora’s secret love for Sir Stephen Lethbridge, who had shot himself a year before; of Lord Hope-Cooper, who had drowned himself in the lake of his beautiful park at Cowrie Hall, in Perthshire; of Viscount Molesley, Leonora Vandervelt and others, whose mysterious suicides had so startled London Society, also of the well-known men and women who had, quite recently, ended their lives apparently for no reason. Was it possible all these people had been driven to desperation by the same means and finally in a fit of temporary insanity, destroyed themselves?”
Suddenly she caught her breath.